


Stitch

by Krimzie



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flashbacks, Mild Smut, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24052378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krimzie/pseuds/Krimzie
Summary: Her backlit silhouette flickered with ethereal smoke. “Leave me, Nathanos.”“My lady,” he replied, but did not move.He wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t. Should she slay him on the spot, it wouldn’t matter, he’d welcome it—and as she responded to his disobedience by surging toward him, he thought it might be the case.
Relationships: Nathanos Blightcaller/Sylvanas Windrunner
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39





	Stitch

**Author's Note:**

> Short undead power couple angst! No one asked for it but here it is. Kind of sort of set during BFA, with reference to a rare Sylvanas Loyalist dialogue line and top secret plans. I don't know. It was written for angst, not plot. X)

_**stitch** \- to mend, join; a _ _sudden, sharp pain_

“Are you certain this will work, my queen?” 

“No.” 

Her missive complete, Sylvanas slid the ink well to the upper corner of the desk and placed the quill delicately alongside its partner. Compulsively, she pocketed the two feathers so their natural curvatures aligned.

It reminded Nathanos, quite unexpectedly, of how Sylvanas stacked her fletching feathers when closing shop after hours of crafting arrows for the Silvermoon armory. Unlike any other ranger’s, her arrows—whether for training or hunting or martial—were not only lethal but of ceremonial quality. Crafting ammunition wasn’t a task required by someone of her rank, but she enjoyed it, finding solace in the details and repetition when patrols were long and politics frustrating. On those nights, he’d made a habit of lounging in an elven chaise adjacent to her workspace and pretending to complete entries in his field journal simply to watch her craft. The way her long, slender fingers and short, clean nails smoothed the vanes and the downy barbs, so softly and delicately; how the furrow of her brow would flare those strange elven vibrissae, flaring like the whiskers of a curious cat. The way her lower lip would pout as she lifted a shaft to the light before choosing a side to carve a nock. 

One special night in particular her attention had slipped, along with her carving knife, and she'd sliced the pad of her thumb. Dead as they now were, it was peculiar to recall the bright, red blood trickling down her palm. 

“Are you alright?” Nathanos had asked, uncrossing his legs and closing the journal. Sylvanas had squeezed a fist over her thumb so as not to dirty her immaculate workspace and as she slid back her stool, she gritted a Thalassian curse. “A bit distracted?” he teased as he grabbed his pack from the side of the chaise. He dug out dried meat and a waterskin before finally procuring a clean wool cloth.

“You might say so,” Sylvanas admitted as Nathanos unfolded her hand and blotted the fresh blood. Crouching before her, he pressed the cloth tightly against her wound and held their joint hands in front of them. 

“What’s on your mind, then?” he asked. While he was looking at her hand, adjusting the pressure, he could feel her looking at him. He spared a glance. Her eyes, glowing a fey bluish white, were ever so hooded. 

“You,” she said firmly, gaze unmoving.

She’d never been shy and never would be, but it would take many years and perhaps even undeath itself for Nathanos to learn to be unflappable in the face of her candor. He’d shifted in his crouch, clearing his throat. “Ah,” he coughed, “that’s… that’s flattering.” With his hands preoccupied with first aid, he couldn’t hide his body’s quick response. And she saw.

Her eyes drifted south and a smirk twisted her pink, pink lips. “A fine daydream indeed. Would you like the details?”

_Yes. Yes, I would._

“We should see to your injury first,” Nathanos said, checking the bleeding. It hadn’t stopped. “It’s too deep to seal on its own, so perhaps you should go to the healer—” She’d leaned into him as he spoke, dragging her stool with a stealthy foot hook. It pressed their hands—and his face—impossibly close to the valley of her breasts.

And, having shed her armor before commencing her crafting, there was very little left to the imagination.

“I—I could only stitch it,” he said, not thinking of much else than burying his head in her chest. Elves didn’t use _sutures_! Too archaic, too _human_. Idiot.

“Go ahead,” Sylvanas said.

“Wh-what?” He scrubbed the back of his hand over his brow. “It’s a needle. Through your skin. Many times.”

She merely cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve survived worse. Perhaps I wish to see your skill. Perhaps I do not want to leave the armory to see a healer.” She leaned her cheek against his and Nathanos was too aware of how warm his own skin felt. She whispered in his ear while tracing its sensitive shell with her free hand. “Or maybe I wish to be at your mercy as you pierce me.”

“With… with a needle,” Nathanos clarified uselessly as he shivered under her touch. She pulled away to look him in the face. She tilted her head.

“Yours is no needle.”

He choked.

She caught his mouth with hers, wasting no time spreading his lips and slipping her tongue beside his. He groaned as she circled around his tongue in a move reminiscent of last week’s adventures involving a table and strawberry jam. The memory and the insistence of her mouth on his drove him all too quickly to a peak.

“Wait! Wait,” he breathed. “I’ll do it. Here.” He leaned back and grabbed his pack once more, procuring a leather satchel in which he carried nylon thread, a small vial of numbing salve, and two thin steel needles. “You know you’re mad, right?”

“Consider it field training. Magic is a depletable resource and it is only wise to prepare,” she said, watching him closely as he threaded the suturing needle. “In the meantime, I wish to tell you about my reverie in quite explicit detail.”

In death, how very familiar stitches had become among the patchwork corpses of the Forsaken. Though his restored body boasted uniform appendages at last, he well remembered the years of reattaching his own cheek flesh and reinforcing the saggy skin of his joints with little more than nylon thread. 

As he looked over at his queen now, he wondered if she still had the scar. He tried not to dwell on these memories, as rare as they were, but ever since he’d acquired his new body, it seemed his mind was at all moments primed for the most bittersweet and ill timed nostalgia. 

Foolishly driven by such nostalgia, he walked over to her writing desk. Without permission or warning, he took her hand and searched it. There. A small white scar across the pad of her colorless thumb. 

Sylvanas looked at it, too—then back at him. Red locked with red and for the briefest of moments Nathanos swore the fire in her eyes softened. She remembered. Her lips parted for only a second before she glared and harshly pulled her hand away.

But he didn’t let go.

“Blightcaller,” she warned.

He didn’t let go.

He lifted her hand to his cold lips and pressed a single kiss over the raised edges of the scar. When he looked up again, the face before him looked…

 _Like Sylvanas with him under the trees in Eversong, dots of sunlight poking through the canopy leaves and spackling her freckled face_ — _Sylvanas in bed until almost noon, with him, cheeks flushed, nose pink_ — _Sylvanas pressing that cheek against his chest to listen until his heart slowed down (but having her so close only ever sped it up)_ — _Sylvanas shouting at him in the town hall long after the constituents had gone home (Sylvanas, it’s after midnight_ — _I will go nowhere until this matter is settled, Nathanos!)_ —like Sylvanas alive. 

And like Sylvanas dead.

She was always Sylvanas, after all.

“You know it doesn’t serve us to think on such matters,” she said, but her tone lacked a finality he’d come to expect in these rare moments. “It is at best a waste of time and at worst, a liability—” She shook her head. “Enough of this, Nathanos. We must remain focused.”

He stepped closer than he’d dared since he could remember. She looked up at him and bristled, her banshee essence coalescing close to the surface of her corpse. Mechanically and unfamiliarly, he lifted his arms and moved to embrace her, but he felt only the faintest brush of her body before she dematerialized and flew to the other side of the room. As she coalesced, her back to him, she angrily sunk her palms onto the window sill.

Her backlit silhouette flickered with ethereal smoke. “Leave me, Nathanos.”

“My lady,” he replied, but did not move. 

He wouldn’t leave. He couldn’t. Should she slay him on the spot, it wouldn’t matter, he’d _welcome_ it—and as she responded to his disobedience by surging toward him once more, he thought it might be the case. Her howl, an oppressive, agonizing scream growing closer and closer, shattered the ink well she’d so carefully placed moments earlier. He braced for what he could only assume would be a most painful annihilation as dark magic would tear the very fabric of his being from the realm of the living, but as she approached she became less ghost and more body and when she slammed into him, she was all Sylvanas again.

He caught her in a reactive embrace and this time she could not but allow it, victim to gravity. Her fangs were bared, her jaw clenching spastically under vein-spidered cheeks. “Do not test me,” she bit out. “Do-not-test-me,” she repeated, with significantly more venom.

And then, to Nathanos’s bewilderment, she was betrayed by a choked sound not unlike a sob.

“My queen,” he said, unmoving, holding her upright in front of him. 

“Why do you choose not to listen? Why now?” she growled, digging her fingers painfully into his upper arms. “We are dead and we will always be dead. I should take all of those memories away from you for all they serve!”

“Then do so,” Nathanos suggested. “I’m sure you have the means.”

Her face, terrifyingly angry, formidably sad, did not soften. “No.”

He needn’t ask why not.

What he did ask, he asked softly, prepared to be denied. “May I?”

It was so low in his chest he wondered if she hadn’t heard. 

But she had.

She was stiff and wary as she tucked her head under his chin. After a moment, she spoke. “The missive will need to be delivered by sundown,” she said as if she were not wrapped in Nathanos’ embrace, as if it were business as usual. “My rangers will see the task is done, but I will need you to proceed as if the gambit has failed. It likely will.”

“And then?”

He felt Sylvanas’ slow nod against his chest. “Then you know what must be done.”

“I do.”

“And no more of…” She pulled back a bit. “No more of this. When the time comes, there can be no hesitation, and if you—”

The words died in her throat, but she didn’t need to say them. “I understand, my lady.”

She looked at him, then, with reverence. With trust. It was a look he knew he’d hold close in his unbeating heart in the battles to come, for he knew not if he’d ever see it again. 

“I know you do, Nathanos. You and you alone.”


End file.
